STUDENT GIRL WITH PEARL EARRING : is one great masterpiece from the genius master painter Johannes Vermeer.

WHENEVER
one happens to be in The Hague, what a pleasure and honor it is to
visit Delft, a peaceful town full of crisscrossing canals less than an
hour's bus ride away from The Netherlands capital.

On
a fine, warm day even sipping a cup of tea at a sidewalk cafe or
enjoying a soft drink while watching the boats row by is ecstasy in
itself.

However, this little Venice has much more to offer an art enthusiast.

Though
the Vermeer Museum has nothing of the monumental grandeur of a
Louvre, stepping into a sensation similar to the one you have when you
enter a home to see the work of a painter who invites you in.

Following his rather early death in 1675, Johannes Vermeer's untraditional creations were practically immediately forgotten in Delft where he was born, where he worked all his life and died.

After
being ignored for nearly two centuries about 20 of his masterpieces
were discovered in 1866 by French art critic and researcher TheophileThore-Burger.

He
was astounded to notice the total mastery with which Vermeer captured
the rays of light and the illuminated or shadowed angles of flowers,
human forms, tables, chairs and other objects in his paintings.

The
expert's persistent inquiry inevitably resulted in a thorough hunt by
other art enthusiasts of the time. Soon enough, a total of 70 works
were listed in a catalogue that that Thore-Burger painstakingly prepared.

However,
it is generally believed today that no more than 37 of these paintings
were actually done by Vermeer, the other being works created under his
influence at later dates.

This may appear to be
a small figure for an artist's achievements, but when you think of the
relatively brief, 43 years of Vermeer's lifetime, things start falling
into place more comprehensively.

Vermeer's
eloquent paintings appear all the more sumptuous when you learn that
during his entire career he had no mentor, no students and no friends.
He followed nobody's style and was never able to sell his work while alive.

His graceful solitude was perhaps the reason for his being named the..........Sphinx of Delft' by Thore-Burger, a title made popular by other art virtuosos of the period.

Contrary
to the expected tradition when painters could only live and work if
they were encouraged and sponsored by royal and aristocratic families.
Vermeer preferred to survive in extreme poverty.

His
characters consequently were fairly often women doing housework,
knitting or going through kitchen routines. The backgrounds were
inevitably the two rooms of the painter's own modest house.

Though
a few scenes of the interiors of other abodes are not non-existent in
Vermeer's paintings, they are rare, and they always represent work -a
lady learning to play a piano, a young man trying to paint-

A
busy astronomer or a geographer studying. Of the 37 so far
acknowledged creations of Vermeer only two paintings show outside vistas
of Delft.

The capture of light rays, whether
entering a room through a side window or being reflected on people's
faces are so realistic that a number of commentators today claim-

Vermeer certainly had access to some kind of an elementary version of a photographical instrument, if not really a camera in the modern sense.

But serious art critics reject this hypothesis as pure nonsense.

''Why
not accept the simple fact that Vermeer was a genius who had visions of
things different from his contemporaries and the mastery to transfer
them to his canvases?'' they ask.

The original idea of the organisers
at the Louvre museum in Paris was to expose, from February to May this
year, the original works by Vermeer in the company of paintings by many
other artists who were inspired by the Sphinx of Delft.

The
exhibition has been a success from Day One when nearly 10,000
visitors waited their turns to enter the Louvre. The usual number for
a successful show on the opening day is normally 5,000.

The
organizers finally solved the problem by requiring the visitors to
procure advance reservations through the Internet in order to avoid
extra-long waiting times.

For the moment, one still has to wait for about half-an-hour to enter the hall where Vermeers are being exposed.

Many thanks to the master art critic ZafMasud/Paris/France.

With
most respectful dedication to all the great art and artistic students
of the world, and art's Professors and Teachers. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011: